Page 32 of Firedrake Betrayal
Isaiah makes a soft sound of assent as he joins us at the dining table. “She seemed quite eager to shut herself in that room with Brennan.”
I swivel to face the now-closed bedroom door, frowning. “Do you think she’s hurting him?”
“I think whatever she’s doing is whatever she wants to do. Where do you think the dragon took Jade?” Patten asks.
“Firedrake,” I correct him, distracted. “Jade said they were firedrakes.”
“Dead is what he is when I get my hands on him,” Patten says.
I shrug off my doubt about Meliah. “We need to focus on finding Jade. Did you learn anything in the bar?” I ask Patten.
He shakes his head. “No one seemed eager to talk to me and no one was screaming about dragons falling out of the sky. The collector must have covered up what happened up there.”
Which reminds me of an idea I had on the drive back to the house.
“Could you go into her dream?” I ask Patten. Almeth, Patten’s dad, had offered it up as a possibility when we first arrived in Wilkerson. “Maybe we don’t need to find her at all. At least, not physically. She can tell us where she is and we can go right to her.”
I don’t trust Almeth, but I do trust Patten. If he can speak to Jade in a dream, it might be the fastest way to finding her.
Patten’s body stiffens, and he gently—too gently—places the container of milk on the table and pushes it away from him, swiping at his milk mustache with the back of his hand.
“Not to feed,” I say. Almeth slipped into Jade’s dreams to feed on her. Twice. We hadn’t even known it until after we rescued Jade and she told us about the incubus wearing Patten’s face. “Just to talk to her. If she told us where she was, we wouldn’t have to track Dominik down. We could go right to her.”
Patten leans across the table toward me, his deep blue eyes hooking mine. “Do you know how an incubus feeds?”
“I’m guessing through sex?”
Patten’s smile is an empty, mirthless thing. “Through sex. But also through slipping into a woman’s dream, taking the shape of a loved one and feeding on her that way.”
I recall what he said in the bar about his mom committing suicide. “Did Almeth do that to your mom?”
“If I did what you suggest—and don’t think I haven’t considered it—I couldn’t stop myself from feeding,” Patten says in a quiet, tense whisper. “I would be there, Jade would be there, presumably there would be a bed nearby. I wouldn’t care about asking her where she is. All I would see is an enormous platter of delicious magical essence I’d want to feed on. There is no ‘just’ slipping into her dream and asking a quick question before I zip on out of there.Thatis what you’re asking me to do.”
The bottom falls out of my stomach. “Shit. I didn’t?—”
“Maybe, if Jade is lucky, and I really fucking hope she is lucky, she kills me fighting me off her,” Patten cuts in. “Or she’s not lucky, and I kill her.”
Silence.
I read all the tension in his face, and I nod. “Okay, so we find her the old-fashioned way, then.”
Patten loses some of his tension and sits back in his seat, crossing his arms. “This town is the size of a skittle. We’ll find her.”
Isaiah snorts.
“Or the size of Isaiah’s?—”
“No,” I interrupt Patten, glaring at him. “I don’t need you to compare this town to Isaiah’s dick or whatever else you want to say.”
A slow smile stretches across Patten’s lips, and he winks at Isaiah. “You heard him. This town is the size?—”
“Focus,” I bark. “Wherever Jade is, we need to find her, and we need to do it before Atticus can, because you can be sure as hell he’ll be looking for her, probably more eager than he ever was after seeing what Brennan turned into.”
None of us knows if Jade can transform into a firedrake. Brennan was careful to keep all his cards close to his chest, and from all accounts, he hid a lot from Jade as well, so she might not know either.
And Dominik…
Who knows what he knows or what his endgame is.
